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About this time old Mr. Wycherley courted the friendship, and requested the assistance, of our young Author, to correct his verses, which had all the uncouth harshness and asperity of Donne: But Wycherley's vanity was soon disgusted by the honest freedom and true judgment with which Pope executed the task he had unwillingly undertaken; a coolness ensued, which ended in a rupture betwixt them. "A book has been written," said a man of wit, "De morbis artificum. Among authors, jealousy and envy are incurable diseases.".

When we consider the just taste, the strong sense, the knowledge of men, books, and opinions, that are so predominant in the Essay on Criticism, and at the same time recollect that it was written before the Author was twenty years old, we are naturally struck with astonishment; and must readily agree to place him among the first critics, though not, as Dr. Johnson says, "among the first poets," on this account alone. As a poet, he must rank much higher for his Eloisa, and Rape of the Lock. This judgment reminds one of what the same critic has said of Dryden's Religio Laici; that one might have expected to have found in it, the effulgence of his genius; though, as he adds, on an argumentative subject; and therefore improper for a display of genius. As much as I revere and respect the memory of my old acquaintance, Dr. Johnson', and as highly as I think of his

The perpetual pompousness, and the uninterrupted elabo¬ ration, of the over-ornamented style of the Rambler, makes one wish that the excellent author had recollected the opinion of Cicero; "Is enim est eloquens, qui et humilia subtiliter, et

abilities, integrity, and virtue, yet must I be pardoned for saying, that I cannot possibly subscribe to many of his critical decisions; particularly to what he has said of the Lycidas, Il Penseroso, and Latin poems of Milton; of the Sixth Book of Paradise Lost; of Tasso's Aminta; of the Rhyming Tragedies, Ode to Killigrew, and the Fables of Dryden; of Chaucer; of the Rehearsal; of Prior; of Congreve's Mourning Bride; of Blackmore; of Yalden; of Pomfret; of Dyer; of Garth; of Lyttelton; of Fielding; of Harris; of Hammond; of Beattie; of Shenstone; of Savage; of Hughes; of Spence; of Akenside; of Collins; of Pope's Essay on Man, and Imitations of Horace; and of the Odes of Gray.

The Essay on Criticism was first advertised at the end of the Spectator, No. 65. May 15, 1711, and was praised by Addison in the December following, in No. 253 of the Spectator. But Pope was not a little displeased at one sentence in this paper, in which Addison said, "I am sorry to find an Author, who is very justly esteemed among the best judges, has admitted some strokes of ill-nature into a very fine poem, which was published some months since, and is a masterpiece of its kind." He adds, "The observations follow one another, like those in Horace's Art of Poetry, without that methodical regularity which would have been requisite in a prose writer.

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magna graviter, et mediocria temperate potest dicere. Nam qui nihil potest tranquille, nihil leniter, nihil partite, definite, distincte, facete dicere, is, cum non præparatis auribus inflammare rem cœpit, furere apud sanos, et quasi inter sobrios bacchari temulentus videtur."

So that Addison did not perceive that clear order and close connexion, which Warburton strove to discover, in order to give some shadow of propriety to a perpetual Commentary upon it.

The fierce hostilities of Dennis against Pope, began from some passages in this Essay, which this redoubted critic applied to himself, and never forgave; but pursued our Author, through life, in bitter invectives against every work he gradually published. Old Mr. Lewis, the bookseller in Russell-street, who printed the first edition of this Essay in quarto, without Pope's name, informed me, that it lay many days in his shop, unnoticed and unread; and that, piqued with this neglect, the Author came one day, and packed up and directed twenty copies to several great men; among whom he could recollect none but Lord Lansdown and the Duke of Buckingham; and that in consequence of these presents, and his name being known, the book began to be called for. This Essay, it is said, was first written in prose, according to the precept of Vida, in his first book, and the practice of Racine, who was accustomed to

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draw out in plain prose, not only the subject of each of the five acts, but of every scene and every speech,

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that he might see the conduct and coherence of the whole at one view, and would then say, "My Tragedy is finished."

The Messiah appeared first in the Spectator, 1712, with a warm recommendation by Steele. Nothing can be added to the just and universal approbation with which it was received and read. It raised the

highest expectations of what the Author was capable of performing.

He was not so happy in his Ode on St. Cecilia's Day; which, in respect both of subject and execution, is so manifestly inferior to that unrivalled one of his master, Dryden; but which Dr. Johnson, by a strange perversity of judgment, pronounces to contain nothing equal to the first bombast stanza of his Ode on Killegrew. Pope's Ode, many years after it was written, was set to music by Dr. Greene, as were the two Choruses to the tragedy of Brutus, by Bononcini, part of which were written by the Duke of Buckingham. Mr. Galliard set to music the Chorus of Julius Cæsar, entirely written by His Grace. This appears from a letter now before me, from Mr. Galliard to Mr. Duncombe.

It was at Steele's desire" that he wrote that beautiful little Ode, The dying Christian to his Soul, to be set to music. But it was not quite candid and open in our Author to tell Steele, that he would see he had not only the verses of Adrian, but the fine frag

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Irregular Odes, of which this is one, seem now to be universally exploded: Dr. Brown has, however, remarked, “ that the return of the same measure, in the Strophe, Antistrophe, and Epode, of the ancient Greek Ode, was the natural consequence of its union with the Dance. But this union being irrecoverably lost, the unvaried measure of the Ode becomes, at best, an unmeaning thing; and indeed is an absurd one, as it deprives the Poet of that variety of measure, which often gives a great energy to the composition, by the incidental and sudden intervention of an abrupt or lengthened versification."

* In general, our Author's subjects, which is a happy circumstance for a poet, were chosen by himself, i

ment of Sappho, in his head; and totally to suppress the name of Flatman, whose Ode he not only imitated, but copied some lines of it verbatim.

If we knew the history of that most unfortunate Lady, who is the subject of the sweet and pathetic Elegy, and could relate it at large, it might give us an opportunity of enlivening these Memoirs, with what the Life of a retired Poet must unavoidably want, some interesting event. No such does the Life of our Author afford, who was in no public station nor employment, as were Milton, Prior, and Addison; and who spent most of his time among his papers and books. All that can now be learnt of this Lady, is to be found in the notes on this Elegy; and is therefore not repeated in this place. A very different scene, and a Lady in another sort of situation, appeared in his next poem, where all was gaiety and gallantry. Lord Petre, in a frolic, carried rather beyond the bounds of delicacy and good-breeding, having cut off a favourite lock of Mrs. Arabella Fermor's hair, his rudeness, as it was called, was resented, and occasioned a serious rupture betwixt the two families. Mr. Caryl, a friend to both parties, desired Mr. Pope to write a piece of raillery on this inviting subject, which might appease their resentment. The Rape of the Lock, therefore, that most delicious poem, in which SATIRE wears the cestus of VENUS, was produced in a fortnight, and appeared, 1711, in only two cantos, in a Miscellany of Lintot. Finding it received with just and universal applause, he in the next year enlarged it into five cantos; and, by the happiest art and judgment imaginable, enriched it with the beau

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